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The Kagan Hearings

This week hearings to confirm US Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan began. Although Kagan will likely be easily confirmed, the moment nonetheless gives Republicans an opportunity to thoroughly examine her ideology. While Kagan has been overly judicious in her responses and has attempted to show no bias, even suggesting that she may recuse herself of cases where obvious bias is demonstrated, she did expose her interpretation of the commerce clause. Unfortunately, Kagan will follow in the footsteps of former justices who have interpreted the commerce clause so broadly as to allow myriad violations of our liberty.

This was obvious when Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) questioned Kagan on whether or not it would be constitutional to mandate that Americans eat three servings of vegetables each day. Playing it off as a silly hypothetical, Kagan nonetheless elicited a response claiming that the “courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless.”